


Humans and Their Genders

by JulisCaesar



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (only a little), Agender Character, Blood, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1512446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulisCaesar/pseuds/JulisCaesar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danni is, first and foremost, a therapist. Which, fortunately enough, is exactly what Torchwood's new employee needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humans and Their Genders

Danni is, first and foremost, a therapist. She did her time at uni, got her degree, accidentally got caught up in an alien invasion, and was hired by Torchwood to help traumatized agents after _their_ first alien invasions.

She’s a therapist, she tells herself repeatedly while putting another clip of ammo into a Weevil.

All salaried Torchwood employees get basic handgun training. Even therapists. For occasions just such as this, presumably, in which a Weevil has somehow managed to get into the women’s restroom.

When it’s over, she looks down at the dead Weevil and wonders vaguely if she’s going to be charged for repairing the tile, and then whether therapists have required therapy sessions.

Her gun is on the counter and she’s splashing water all over everything when the door opens.

For a moment, she and the newcomer just stare at each other. Male-presenting, but she knows as well as anyone how little that means, and they _are_ in the women’s restroom, with spiky brown hair and a blue pinstriped suit. “I—heard a noise,” they say, gesturing wildly with one hand.

She can only imagine what she must look like, white blouse covered in blood, skirt only saved because it was already plaid, stains up and down her arms—Weevil blood dries astonishingly fast and there had been several moments of shock before she could get to the sink—hair in disarray. “I dealt with it.”

“Oh.” They nod several times. “Okay. Well. That’s—that’s good then.” They run one hand through their hair.

Danni frowns at them, before returning to scrubbing at her arms. She’s not on duty, it’s still her lunch break, so if they need something, they can go find another therapist. Marshall is good.

Their shoes scuff against the floor. “Is this the women’s lav?”

The soap is harsh and stings a little, but the blood starts to flake off. “Yeah.”

“And—next door is the men’s?” Their voice is quiet and hesitant, and Danni turns the sink off,  looking at them.

“Yup.” She leans on the counter, frowning slightly.

Their hands are in their pockets and they’re shifting back and forth. “And those are the only two options?”

She straightens slightly, suddenly paying more attention to the conversation than just the idle and-what’s-your-problem-this-week-agent. “I’ve been on administration’s backs to get the labels taken off the single-stall restrooms, but until they listen, yeah, you’ve got to pick male or female.”

“Oh.” Their gaze flickers around the room.

“Pronouns?” Danni asks gently.

They stiffen, eyes wide. “What?”

This is going to be a longer conversation than she initially thought. Turning back to the sink, Danni says over the splashing water, “What pronouns do you prefer? He, him, his? Ey, eir, em? Et cetera.”

They scratch the back of their neck. “You get a choice?”

A _very_ long conversation. “Okay look, I need to get this blood off, but if you want, after that we can go back to my office and talk about gender.”

* * *

 

The employee follows her to her office, flatting their hands restlessly on pinstriped trousers. “I understand genders on other worlds—well, no I don’t, but I thought I—” They break off.

“Sit.” Danni points at a chair. “I’m Danielle Taris.”

They give her a blank look but sit in the stuffed chair.

She sits opposite them, a clipboard with a blank sheet on her lap. “What’s your name?”

“Oh!” They straighten, hands folded in their lap. “Jamie Noble.”

She has to blink. Jamie Noble, hired two months ago and sent straight to the top, only does Recon, only commands missions, according to rumour dating the General’s daughter, no past, never in the counselling offices, never in the clinic, never buys anything—gossip spends as much time on what _isn’t_ known about Agent Noble as what is. “You didn’t make your required therapy session last month,” she says.

They frown, eyebrows drawing in and lips pursing. “I didn’t need a therapy session.”

“Field agents aren’t a good judge of what their mental health needs are, that’s why the sessions are _required_ ,” she replies instantly. She’s gotten this argument from every agent to walk through her doors. “But you aren’t here for that. I’m not going to browbeat you into obeying orders, that’s someone else’s job.”

They immediately look more interested—Danni had seen their eyes flickering around the room, one leg shifting restlessly.

She leans forward slightly. “Genders.”

They nod, silent.

“Western society says that there are just two genders, male and female, and that gender always matches sex.” She waits for their nod, and then says flatly, “this is a lie.”

Jamie scratches the back of their neck. “So if I have—female—ah—parts. I’m not necessarily female?”

Danni can’t stop herself from remembering the first time she looked in the mirror, stark naked, and wondered what it would be like to just cut the thing off.  “No.” Her voice doesn’t shake. She’s proud of that, somewhere.

“And if I have a mix?” Jamie’s voice is shaking a bit, and their hands are clenched in their lap. “This wasn’t a problem before, before I knew, I was supposed to be male because everyone kept saying I was and Gallifrey never had anything like this, but now I’m supposed to be male except males have,” they make a vague hand gesture, “and I don’t but I don’t look female and I looked it up on the internet but the pictures weren’t helpful, my—” another hand gesture, this one sort of directed towards their crotch— “doesn’t look like any of the pictures, and Rose—I can’t ask Rose, I’m the Doctor I’m supposed to know and I don’t and I can’t tell Rose that I’m not _him_ anymore.”

She waits until they’re done talking, until they’re pale and shaking and hunched over, until they’re giving her a look that she knows too well, a look that says she’s their last resource. “Take a breath.”

They obey.

“I don’t know what happened,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have the authorization to know, before you try to tell me. There are a couple of words you could use right now, regardless. One, intersex. It refers to someone whose sexual characteristics are a mix of male and female. Two, transgender, or someone whose gender doesn’t match the one they were assigned at birth. Do you follow?”

After a pause, they nod, frowning. “I wasn’t assigned anything at birth.”

She doesn’t physically respond; off hours she can be dramatic, flamboyant even, but when she’s working, she’s controlled. “That’s fine. Let’s start with intersex. Now, feel free to not disclose anything you aren’t comfortable with—”

“I don’t have a filter,” they say, looking amused for the first time.

Danni has to fight the urge to smile in response. “Alright. Do you have a penis, a vagina, neither, or both?”

They run a hand through their hair. “Well, a—vagina.” Their voice drops drastically on the third word.

“And you don’t have breasts?” she says, although the answer is fairly obvious. Jamie is male-passing—she’s pretty sure their ID card marks them as male—and with this degree of confusion, they almost certainly aren’t binding.

They shake their head. “That _does_ look like the pictures.”

She nods. “I’m not intersex, but it sounds like you’re welcome to the label if you want it.”

They give her an absolutely petrified look that was probably intended to come off as bravado. It failed.

“When you think about yourself, Jamie,” she says quietly, using their name for the first time, “do you see yourself as male?”

Jamie shakes their head.

“Female?” she asks although she thinks she knows the answer.

Another shake.

Tension bleeds out of her shoulders. This part she’s done before. Walking another nonbinary individual through their realization won’t ever be easy, not since she’s binary and sometimes has problems wrapping her head around all that nonbinary means, but it at least is straightforward. “Do you feel that you have a gender?”

There’s a pause, and then Jamie looks up to meet her eyes. “I don’t know what a gender _is_ ,” they say, and it’s probably the most heartbreakingly honest thing she’s heard all week.

Danni is a therapist, and even if she spends most of her time doing trauma counselling, she had a gender identity crisis of her own and knows how to coach someone else through theirs. And if that someone else is Jamie Noble, code name _the Doctor_ , so be it.

She’s helping people. As she hands over a sheet of pronouns to Jamie and watches their face turn both overwhelmed and excited, she thinks they might have some experience with that.

**Author's Note:**

> [4/17/2014 4:48:22 PM] Charamei: like. Tentoo is easy because [1] he's half human and [2] Donna had just received a full brain download from Ten so whether Tentoo has one or not she's still not gonna be surprised  
> [4/17/2014 4:48:34 PM] Charamei: and Time of the Doctor didn't happen anyway so  
> [4/17/2014 4:48:53 PM] Charamei: ...what if Tentoo has a vagina  
> [4/17/2014 4:49:00 PM] Avia Patrexes: ........oh my  
> [4/17/2014 4:49:01 PM] Charamei: he's half d o n n a  
> [4/17/2014 4:49:46 PM] Julis Caesar: i should /write/ a fic like that


End file.
